Dr Sleep confirms it...

...I really, really don't care for Stephen King.

The sequel to The Shining has turned up on Netflix, and I can see why it was a box office flop.

I have read that the book of The Shining had much more of what I think could be called magical realism, and it was Kubrick who turned it into a more ambiguous and realistic psychological study, well capable of different interpretations.  And King didn't like it. 

So I presume this sequel follows his book closely, as the magical realism abounds.   No ambiguity here - the ghosts from The Overlook have followed Danny all of his life, and ancient quasi gypsies tour the world looking for kiddies with psychic power to suck it, or their souls, out of them.  Danny finds himself in contact with one such potential victim and decides to help her.

I think it's an idea that could work, and for much of the first hour (which is about as long as the first act takes to unfold - it's a very leisurely told story) it kept reminding me of Ray Bradbury - in particular Something Wicked This Way Comes, which happens to be my favourite novel of his.   While the movie never bored me, it was more a case that I kept expecting it to develop into something with genuine suspense, dread or scares:  but they simply never come. 

I think it became clear that was from a writer devoid of good ideas when many of the supernatural villains were taken out in a very typically American way [I say so as not to be accused of too much as spoiler].   This is probably about 3/4 of the way in, and the movie from there just kept getting less and less convincing.

I also had a problem with the lead villain actress - it's hard to put my finger on it, but there was just something sort of smug about her performance and physicality that carried no menace at all.

So yeah, not a great movie, and I blame Stephen King totally for a bad story.